Retro Corner: 'Home Alone' (NES)

First Released: NES (1990)
Now Available For: N/A

It's Christmas time, so it seemed fitting to make this week's edition of Retro Corner festive-themed. The trouble was, having already covered James Pond 2: Robocod, what's left that's worth reminiscing over? After trawling through a mire of cheap casual fare and gimmicky titles, we concluded that the answer to that is not much.

With precious few Christmas crackers on the consoles of yesteryear, we felt that the best option was to go with a game that sticks in our mind for all of the wrong reasons. Enter Home Alone on NES, a title that proves movie licenses were just as poorly handled in the early '90s as they are today.

Home Alone the film - which recently featured in Digital Spy's Top 25 Christmas Movies - is an undisputed family classic. A mischievous youth getting one over on a pair of dim-witted burglars using homemade traps was a recipe for a phenomenally successful comedy flick, but its video game adaptation was about as well thought out as a Wet Bandits scheme.

Home Alone on NES followed much the same plot as its cinematic predecessor. Kevin McAllister is accidentally left behind when his family heads off on holiday and must stop two burglars from robbing his home, using traps made from various household appliances.

The object of the game was to keep the Wet Bandits at bay until the police arrived, which took precisely 20 minutes. Players could temporarily incapacitate their two foes using the various traps scattered around Kevin's home, some stunning them longer than others. There were also various hiding spaces Kevin could tuck himself away in, though each could be used no more than twice.

Home Alone took place from the side on perspective, and the action never left the McAllister's three-storey house. There was little variety in the way of gameplay. Beyond not being caught by the two burglars who moved a great deal faster than you did, the only real challenge was mastering the awkward controls.

Not only was there a time delay on every command you carried out, the stairs in Kevin's house were the bane of players' existence. It's difficult to describe just how awkward climbing them was, but if one of the Bandits was giving chase, they were guaranteed to be your downfall.

An unfair level of difficulty didn't help matters. The Bandits were already significantly speedier than you, and they grew faster and more aggressive as the timer ran down. From the halfway point onwards, you were in for a rough ride. One hit spelt instant death, and if your foes didn't catch you on the stairs, they'd corner you in the basement.

Seeing Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern come a cropper in the Home Alone movie was genuinely funny (for the first few viewings at least), but there are no such kicks to be had watching it happen to their video game counterparts. Whether you hit them with paint cans, tacks or that pet tarantula (represented on screen by square icons), the end result was always the same old animation of them thrashing on the floor for a few seconds.

Home Alone was a 20-minute loop of monotony and frustration, but at least it looked good for an early '90s effort. The house was bright and colourful, and the character models were recognisable. However, for a game based on a movie that won an Academy Award for its original score, there isn't much music to speak of. An 8-bit rendition of the theme song played on a continuous loop soon became as irritating as anything else in the game.

So which studio was responsible for this half-baked Christmas pudding? An obscure software house that collapsed shortly afterwards? Nope. It was none other than Bethesda Softworks, the developer behind the sublime Fallout series and this year's game of the year contender The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Home Alone on NES was a poor attempt to cash in on a popular Hollywood blockbuster. If you're after some festive kicks this Christmas, we recommend revisiting the Chris Columbus film or its sequel rather than this 8-bit turkey.

Do you have any fond memories of Home Alone? Post a comment below!